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Welcome Welcome to the July 2014 issue of the Social Sciences eNews! Make a Difference Invest in tomorrow's leaders today. Learn how!Follow us on 
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Commencement 2014 Social sciences major Jacqueline Rodriguez helps President Obama master the "Zot!"
Read on for more coverage on the campuswide commencement celebration and photos from the school's ceremonies... UCI cognitive scientist uses crowdsourcing to predict World Cup outcome Algorithms use Ranker data to predict host country Brazil as 2014 soccer champs
Soc sci alumni honored by San Diego County Bar Association Bermudez, '98, Kanter, '00, recognized for service
Brueckner edits special issue of Economics of Transportation Journal features studies on airlines and airports
More positive press for Myth of Mirror Neurons Book by UCI cognitive scientist refutes role of so-called mirror neurons in human cognition
Capital in twenty-first century China Wang Feng, sociology professor, on rising inequality in China, courtesy of the China Spectator
Lee with Tavis Smiley Jennifer Lee, sociology professor, discusses the erosion of affirmative action opportunities for higher education with PBS's Tavis Smiley
Who really gets the minimum wage Economist David Neumark weighs in in Wall Street Journal op-ed
North Africa: African migrants in the Middle East and North Africa - separate line of theorizing needed Kelsey Norman, political science grad student, provides perspective in an allAfrica op-ed
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Jacqueline Rodriguez is the first person in her family to finish college. A Hacienda Heights native, Rodriguez was selected to be the undergraduate speaker at
the all campus commencement ceremony headlined by President Barack Obama at Angels Stadium on June 14. The community college transfer student received degrees in
sociology and Chicano/Latino studies and will enroll in a Ph.D. program in education this fall. While at UCI, Rodriguez was a member of UC Irvine's SAGE Scholars
program. She pursued and presented research through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and was an active participant in the campus's Early Academic
Outreach Program. Her speech to the crowd of more than 39,000 focused on investing in education. She credits her family and faculty mentors with giving her the
support and motivation she needed to succeed in higher education. After graduation, she'll lead a summer residential program at UC Irvine for community college
students and travel to her family's homeland, El Salvador.
Millions of soccer fans around the globe watched in shock as World Cup defending champion Spain was knocked out of the running for a repeat title by losing to
the Netherlands and Chile. But UC Irvine cognitive scientist Michael Lee wasn't surprised. He says the team to beat is host country Brazil and he bases this call
on his "wisdom of the crowd" modeling skills. He has put those skills to work in partnership with Ranker – a website that solicits crowd opinions – to predict
the outcome of the World Cup. "The World Cup tournament structure places strong constraints on possible outcomes – something a good prediction should follow,"
says Lee. Together with Ravi Selker, a visiting graduate student from the University of Amsterdam, and Ravi Iyer, chief data scientist from Ranker, Lee created
algorithms to aggregate and analyze different types of rankings provided by the site's users, as well as the tournament structure, in order to arrive at their
prediction.
UCI political science alumni Nadia Bermudez, '98, and Rebecca Kanter, '00, were recently honored by the San Diego County Bar Association with 2014 service
awards. Bermudez was named the recipient of the association's Diversity Award, recognizing her commitment to promote and encourage diversity in the legal
profession. Kanter received the Public Attorney Award in recognition of her excellence in the practice of law with service to the community, profession,
association and legal education. Bermudez is a partner of Garcia, Hernández, Sawhney & Bermudez LLP in San Diego and her practice focuses on employment
litigation, counseling and general business litigation. Kanter is an assistant U.S. Attorney in San Diego, a criminal prosecutor and an active community
volunteer for causes ranging from the environment to the arts. The two received their awards April 30 at the association's annual Law Week Luncheon & Celebration
of Community Service at the Westin San Diego.
Check out the special issue of Economics of Transportation for a series of articles on airlines and airports, edited by UC Irvine economics professor Jan
Brueckner. Brueckner is an expert on airline pricing policy, mergers and their impact on consumers. He also specializes in urban finance and housing research. He
received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and was a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before coming to UC Irvine in
2005. He is currently the chair of the economics department. 
The Myth of Mirror Neurons by Gregory Hickok, UCI cognitive sciences professor, is getting more positive press. It's featured in the July issue of Booklist
Magazine and Kirkus Review, available now online. In May, the book received a positive review in Publisher's Weekly. The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real
Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition uses scientific data and literature review to refute claims made about these brain cells' roles in everything from
language and empathy to autism and schizophrenia. Drawing on a broad range of observations from work on animal behavior, modern neuroimaging, neurological
disorders and more, Hickok argues that the assumptions underlying mirror neuron theory fall flat in light of the facts. He then explores alternative accounts of
mirror neuron function while illuminating a host of questions about human cognition and brain function. The book will be available in August from W.W. Norton &
Company.
China's inequality story received only scant attention in Thomas Piketty's monumental new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Piketty drew data mostly
from sources in France, Britain, the United States and, to a lesser extent, Germany, Canada, Japan, Italy and Australia. These are all countries that have large
quantities of capital and long histories of capital accumulation. But now, as China is poised to become the largest economy in the world, it is also one of the
countries in which inequality is rising faster than anywhere else. China could, to a large extent, define the contours of global inequality in the twenty-first
century, just as Great Britain and the United States did in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, respectively. 
Lee's research projects stem from her interests in the intersection of immigration and race/ethnicity, with much of her work focused on the ways in which
contemporary immigrants affect native-born Americans. She's a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine and author of Civility in the City,
co-author of The Diversity Paradox and co-editor of Asian American Youth. She's been a fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
and at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and a Fulbright Scholar to Japan. She's also been a visiting scholar at the
Russell Sage Foundation.
President Obama is pushing hard for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $10.10, from $7.25. State and local governments have jumped on the bandwagon.
Massachusetts has passed a minimum of $11, the highest state minimum in the country, and Seattle's City Council has voted to raise the wage floor to $15 an
hour over seven years; San Francisco is considering a hike to $15 too. The president and others argue that a higher minimum wage is needed to help poor and
low-income families, who have suffered from stagnating wages and rising income inequality. But a higher minimum wage would do little for such families.
States in the Middle East and North African (MENA) regions are primarily considered to be senders of migrants, despite the fact that they are also becoming
countries of settlement for African migrants. This phenomenon is a direct result of the increasingly stringent border controls enacted by Western states since
the end of the Cold War. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) calls these former transit states 'countries of settlement by default,' implying that
the new receiving countries consider permanent or semi-permanent migration to be undesirable. Generally, destination countries - otherwise referred to as
'immigrant receiving' countries or 'traditional countries of settlement' - have been Western states.
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